satisfy
by Anrheithwyr
Summary: "The world says: "You have needs - satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov


"_The world says: "You have needs - satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder." _

― _Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov_

"_If it weren't for greed, intolerance, hate, passion and murder, you would have no works of art, no great buildings, no medical science, no Mozart, no Van Gough, no Muppets and no Louis Armstrong." _

― _Jasper Fforde, The Big Over Easy_

…

_Greed: the inordinate desire to possess wealth, goods, or objects of abstract value with the intention to keep it for one's self, far beyond the dictates of basic survival and comfort. A high desire for and pursuit of wealth, status, and power._

…

_Date: October 17, 1981_

_Location: Not entirely certain_

_Target: Not yet received_

_Reward: 100 galleons_

He had been feeling some anxiety for quite some time now, sitting in a small, run down house for several hours with no explanation, no reason for being here right now other than because this was where he had been instructed to be.

The house was unusually quiet, seeing as how old and creaky it was; it made no noise, even when the wind howled and he shivered, wishing that he had at least had the sense to bring along a cloak if he was going to be sitting out a mid-October chill such as this.

Hadn't they promised there would be others? Compatriots, fellows, to help him out, because if there was one thing that he knew, it was that courage was not a trait that came to Jacen Gibbon easily; no, he worked better in groups, with friends to help him out and keep him safe.

And what was better than being safe? Motivation, of course. Lovely, that as a Death Eater, you were not only offered a chance at life, but could be sought out for missions of more…financial gain. Gibbon couldn't imagine such a career anywhere else, and the money given out for missions was enough to keep him coming back for years.

Which was how he had ended up here, in this abandoned house, with the wind howling, waiting on his partners to arrive; they were going out _hunting _tonight, a thought that made Gibbon snicker, recalling the little werewolf girl they'd chased after just weeks ago.

A tiny little thing, she was a scrap of an eight year girl, with long, muck-filled, tangled hair and feral eyes, the result of two werewolf parents who couldn't be bothered to raise their filthy half-breed spawn properly. That was why _Gibbon _had been sent in, to track the lass down and offer her something only an idiot would refuse: safety and someone to take care of her.

Of _course_, the girl had agreed, because, regardless of how little you knew about the strange man approaching you, if you've been raising yourself for years, and someone suddenly offered to give you a home and regular warm meals, you _take _that offer.

And _her _cost, an eight year old bastard werewolf, had been fourteen galleons, a nice price for an easy grab; this new target was worth one _hundred _galleons, an idea that made Gibbon salivate and agree to do whatever was required of him, if it just meant he'd have money.

Hell, he'd kill, if it meant earning a little more money. (He _had _killed for money before, but that wasn't the important part.) Gibbon had never tried to portray himself as anyone who was heroic, or good, or even vaguely noble. He liked living and he liked money, and there was little he wouldn't do if it meant he'd get a chance at either, or even both.

And one bloody _hundred _galleons was just the sort of tune that Gibbon liked to sing, and so sing he would, even if it meant killing his own best friend. Not, of course, that Gibbon really had anyone he could have called his best friend, and his only family remaining was a sister who hadn't talked to him in almost seven years, but that was beside the point.

He had tracked targets through the Forbidden Forest. He had followed them down the streets of London or through the countryside. He had followed targets through the sweet darkness and through the burning heat, and every time, he'd gotten his job done and earned his money.

Greedy, some of the other Death Eaters said, giving him snide looks and whispering about the bag of gold he would always hold when he walked out of a meeting, a grin on his face, even when they called him moneybags and greedy.

If they cared so much, then the others could just get involved in the missions as well, the ones that paid, the ones that made Gibbon jump with glee and daydream about his account in Gringott's, which was steadily growing larger and larger each time the Dark Lord called upon him.

"Gibbon?"

There was a cloaked figure at the door, moving so quietly that Gibbon hadn't even noticed him come in. The man pulled off his mask, revealing the nervous, twitching face of Peter Pettigrew, his dull blue eyes glancing around the empty, dusty house with fear, as though expecting Aurors or Order members to jump out at him at any second.

"Gibbon, the targets have been located," Pettigrew mumbled, pulling out a piece of parchment and the bag...the bag in which a hundred galleons sat, jingling and clanking as he held it out to Gibbon.

"Name?" Gibbon asked, knowing he could just take the parchment from Pettigrew's hands and read it himself, but he liked making the younger, blond man shake and stutter. There weren't many people who feared Gibbon, but Pettigrew was one of them, and Jacen Gibbon was the sort of person to take advantage of such things when needed.

"M-Marlene McKinnon," Pettigrew muttered, going pink in the cheeks. "And any others found in the house with her. T-this includes all other family members, e-even c-children. T-hose are the instructions that I have been told to give to you."

"Children, huh? No mercy, I suppose, then? Quick job, or am I allowed to make them squirm?" Gibbon grinned when Pettigrew turned green. "Oh, I almost forgot, that's right. McKinnon was a classmate of yours, wasn't she? That's right, seventy-one to seventy-eight? Kind of pretty blonde who always tagged around with that redheaded Mudblood? Hmm," Gibbon pulled his wand from his pocket, twirling it around while Pettigrew trembled slightly. "Now, now. You knew that getting into this business meant saying bye-bye to some of your buddies, didn't you? Oh, don't worry, Pettigrew, just for you, I'll kill her quickly, how's that?"

That was a lie. Gibbon thought the slow, torturous deaths were the best sort and for one hundred galleons, he would get more than just a few screams out of McKinnon and her family. If he was really lucky, her redheaded Mudblood slut of a friend would also be there, so Gibbon could _really_ have some fun, and then he could just discard the bodies before anyone else found out.

(Or maybe he would just send them to Pettigrew as an early Christmas present. The thought made Gibbon almost cackle.)

"Any partners?" Gibbon asked, setting his wand out on the table and pulling out the knife in his pocket, grinning at the uncomfortable look on Pettigrew's face, the way the younger man squirmed and inched away from him. "I need to know who I'm working with."

He needed to know if he was splitting the money, and if so, with who? If it was someone he could easily talk out of a few galleons, then things would be easier; if necessary, Gibbon wasn't above staging a not so mild "accident" for his fellow Death Eaters.

They might say that people like him, people who were willing to do anything for a few extra galleons, were greedy and cold-hearted, but Gibbon considered himself to just be the sort of person who was willing to do whatever it took to get ahead.

He might be called greedy, but Gibbon didn't care; in the long run, he was the one who would be financially happy and financially secure. If that meant taking out a few unimportant young girls or their families, then Gibbon was perfectly fine with that.

"You'll have Thorfin and Rowle, possibly Travers if he b-bothers to show up," Pettigrew mumbled, looking away briefly, before finishing with a quiet, "and m-me."

"You? _You, _Pettigrew, is that what you just said? _You're _going to help me kill one of your own classmates?" Oh, this was almost too _great. _He would be able to torture some of Pettigrew's old friends right in front of him. This might just be enough to shock the nervous blond man into refraining from taking any sort of cut out of the hundred galleons.

"Yeah…" Pettigrew mumbled, and Gibbon got to his feet, scooping up the wand and the knife, stuffing them carelessly back into his cloak pocket and grabbing Pettigrew by his elbow, pulling him outside of the house and past the creaky wooden gate that did nothing to protect the property that none other than him had entered in over thirty years.

"Well, come on then, my good friend, we've got a lovely young lady to go find. Marlene McKinnon, hmm? Yes, we ought to hurry, or else her Order member buddies might catch up to us and try to _prevent _our important little mission. Of course, I'm sure they aren't being assisted by anyone, isn't that right, Pettigrew?"

"O-of course not," Pettigrew mumbled, looking down at the ground as Gibbon continued to pull him past the Apparation point with a feral grin. "I would never betray those of us who are in the right, those of us who are working for a better way of life."

"Of course, Pettigrew, no one was doubting your integrity, least of all me," Gibbon replied as they Apparated to the most recent meeting place, where the other two or three members of their party would hopefully be waiting. "Now come on, let's go say hello to your good friend, Marlene, shall we? I'm sure she'll be _so _excited to see you."

_And I will be so excited to finally put all this money into my vault at Gringott's and get away from all these idiots for a little while. _

…

"Yeah, but was it worth it?"

That was what they would ask him later, after the fact, after the girl was long dead and buried, a nice little plot of dirt surrounded by a thousand other plots of dirt, along with the rest of her family, all of them killed off for the lovely, _lovely _price of one hundred galleons, the sort of price that had led Gibbon to many a crime before.

"Yeah, but was it worth it?"

That was what they would ask him later, when he was arrested for nearly fourteen years, locked away in a small cell in Azkaban, without light or friendship or any chance to use the money he had accumulated over years of serving Voldemort for a price, which he had had to discard before they caught him, reluctantly parting with the money he had worked so hard to earn.

"Yeah, but was it worth it?"

That was what they would ask him later, his face plastered across the newspapers as one of the Death Eaters who had escaped, though he had not immediately run to his Lord, but rather sought out the money he had buried, grinning eagerly when he uncovered the coins buried at the foot of a grave that had once been a girl named Marlene McKinnon.

"Of course it was worth it."

That was how he would always respond, coins jingling in his pockets as he struck down person after person, following the other Death Eaters up the staircase to the tower, climbing higher and higher, imagining all the ways he would finally be able to spend his money once the Dark Lord finally took over Britain, with Gibbon his faithful servant.

"It was always worth it."

And now he was dead, a body tossed carelessly into an unmarked grave, his coins spilling from his pockets, some claimed by eager embalming assistants, some thrown into the grave with him for luck, because he had a lonely funeral, with no one in attendance except for the undertaker and his daughter, who was a child that would learn to dance on the graves of a dead man.

"Yeah, but was it worth it?"

"Yes, of course it was worth it. Every bit."


End file.
